This area of the forum seemed a little...dead, ha. So I figured maybe I would post something. Since it's 2:30 in the morning and my creativity has been shot by hours of Halo 3 and Vault soda, I reckon I will submit for your enjoyment one of my older works. I wrote this over two and a half years ago following a funky dream I had. It's unpolished, but not too bad. I hope y'all like it!


~*Dawnborne*~


There is magic in the sunrise. A power exists there which cannot be seen by the eyes of man, nor can it truly be felt. What man can sense of this divinity is so insignificant an amount that it could not exist alone. It is coupled to something far greater. It surpasses the comprehension of man, which makes it, then, more powerful in itself than any god that could be dreamed from their imagination.

This is not to say, however, that no being exists which cannot experience this power. They are born of it – from the dawn; from the dusk; from the earth, moon, and stars.

With the passing of Moonborne followed Dawnborne, following the cycle laid for them eons ago, and for eons did Dawnborne exist without form. But, as a creature of emotion, Dawnborne grew lonely and desired companionship. And so Dawnborne took the form of man and walked among them.

The first person he saw was a small boy and Dawnborne knew that he had found the friend he had so desired. He stayed with the boy and was dear to him for several years.

While in a more ethereal form Dawnborne had thought earth and man to be beautiful, and now he longed to see more of that beauty, beyond the eyes of the young boy who had brought him so much joy; and so one day, Dawnborne departed.

He traveled for days, then months, then years, and saw many things. He saw men use men; he saw the rich much sooner scoff at the poor than help them; he saw the evils of man and little of the good as they raced toward conquest, toward a triumph over an enemy unknown and unnamed. He watched as they waged wars then worshipped them. He watched as they tried to turn their gods into toys; dolls, mock-ups of divinity in their own image with which they could justify themselves.

Greatly upset he came to rest in a slum on the far outskirts of a large city. As he sat there on the dirt ground he was approached by a young man dressed in rags. “You’ve returned, my friend,” said he.

It was then that Dawnborne recognized this man. It was the friend he had left behind so long ago, grown now, and living as a tramp. He had lived this way all along but it was only now that Dawnborne realized how pathetic the man was and always had been, and he was disturbed all the more. The man sat with him and asked in a quiet voice what troubled him.

Dawnborne replied, “I have seen the world and I’ve found it inadequate. The earth is beautiful. People are innately beautiful. Why is this existence so wretched? I do not understand.”

“Then change your perspective. The easiest way to understand something is to change the way in which you see it.”

Dawnborne took some dirt from the ground on which he sat and closed his hands over it. As the man watched, Dawnborne drew back his hands and revealed a crystalline sphere. Inside the sphere the man could see a black castle with tall, ominous prison towers.

“The castle, while beautiful, is still a prison. It is filled with the worst of creatures and hallows the worst of atrocities. This is what I see.”

“What happens if you turn the sphere?”

“The world will change to conform to what I see. That is my power.”

“Then change it, if that is your will.”

“And what of you?”

“I am content and unconcerned, but I must say your vision is distorted. You have to look at the castle for its beauty. Its purpose is inconsequential, its inhabitants a triviality as they are not flaws in architecture. If the castle is beautiful, why change it?”

As the words of the man swirled through his mind Dawnborne arose and began to wander. He walked for days until her found himself isolated in a field of tall, forgotten grasses.

He stared as his crystal, a manifestation of his perceived reality – his essence – his true self. The first rays of the sunrise began to creep up over the horizon and Dawnborne held the crystal between himself and his namesake. He had the power to change things.

He turned his wrist.

In his mind’s eye Dawnborne could see a world virtually destroyed. Chaos reigned. Wars ran rampant. Destruction inundated the earth. Blood mixed with oil and killed every living thing.

In his haste for perfect beauty, Dawnborne had forgotten one thing about human nature – how easily men are returned to their primal state when faced with something they do not understand. By changing their world he sealed their fate. They would ultimately destroy themselves and their planet. Things would not become more beautiful. All the beauty would be gone.

The earth trembled beneath him and he knew what he had done. He stared at the crystal in his hand as it reflected the light of the sunrise, and then shattered it.

As he fell back and closed his eyes, shedding his obtained human form, he, like Moonborne before him, passed away. Songborne, as the divine cycle had dictated, would rise next, just like the songs of the morning birds indeed follow the dawn.